Let The Storm Rage On
by Julia451
Summary: "That's my secret - I'm always angry." When did Dr. Banner give up the "conceal, don't feel" strategy? How did he learn to control his power by letting himself feel? It all started when he woke up from an incident in a faraway kingdom called Arendelle and had a long conversation with a queen with a past very similar to his own. Set before The Avengers film but after Frozen.


I'd been hiding out in Norway for eight peaceful months when the incident happened. It was stupid – a mugger thrust me against a wall, held a knife an inch away from my throat, and demanded my money. I instantly emptied my pockets and handed everything over, too busy trying to assess my pulse rate to care much about the weapon. The guy didn't believe that was all I had and hit me, demanding it all. _Don't get angry, don't let it in, don't feel it_, I told myself, as always, silently begging him to leave me alone before it was too late.

I tried to explain as best as I could in my fourth or fifth new language in as many months that that was all I had, but the guy said rich American tourists always had more. I could feel my heart rate accelerating. I had to conceal the anger that was building up! _Don't feel it, don't feel it, don't feel!_ He didn't believe I wasn't an American tourist. He punched me in the face and kicked me to the ground.

"Don't make me angry!" I warned out of force of habit. The mugger laughed and kicked me again, joking about how scared he was now. I devoted every ounce of my willpower to ignoring the rage and humiliation building up and smothering my natural defensive instincts; I couldn't risk lifting a finger to protect myself. _Don't get angry, don't feel! Conceal it, don't feel it!_ I tried to escape but tripped getting up. A woman passing asked if I was all right. Oh, no!

I saw the man round on her. I begged him to leave her alone. _Don't get angry, don't let it show._ He hit me again. I implemented every anger management, every breath control strategy I'd learned. _Conceal it!_ I knew when I saw the woman's head hit the pavement that I'd failed to keep it in again.

The first thing I noticed when I came to was how cold I was. I listened for the sounds of the city but heard nothing but wind – hopefully, that meant I was far away from where I could have hurt anyone. The soft, wet stuff under my back had to be snow. Even though it was winter, it hadn't been this cold in Norway – he must have run north. There was nothing in that direction but miles of uninhabited wilderness. How far had he gotten? I didn't open my eyes or move but lay there wondering how long it had lasted this time.

I then heard the most terrifying sound I could hear in these situations – a human voice. It took me a moment before I could place the language as Norwegian and another before I could process and translate the words: "Hello? Can you hear me?" There was a pause, then it said, "If you can hear me, please say something."

With effort, I whispered the first word that came to my mind – "Yes" – as I began opening my eyes.

"Are you all right?"

I suddenly realized that the voice was a woman's. Call my priorities skewed, but my hands instinctively shot right to my waist, and I breathed a sigh of relief that my pants had come through this one intact. I slowly sat up and tried to take in my surroundings. I was on a snowy mountainside overlooking a beautiful harbor, full of wooden ships surrounding a stone castle. It was no place I recognized. Judging by the sky, it was almost dusk. It was no longer snowing, but the ground was white in every direction, and odd piles of snow, some that had the semblance of wrecked sculptures, were scattered all over the area. The thing that really got my attention, however, was the fact that I was surrounded by a circle of giant icicles sticking up out of the ground like stalagmites.

I looked more carefully at the ground around me. Some huge struggle had obviously taken place in the snow recently. I didn't know how the other guy had ended up trapped in a cage of ice, but I was grateful to whoever had done it. How had they pulled it off? I stood up and gripped one of the thick, icy pillars in my hands. They certainly felt solid, but it was hard to believe they'd been strong enough to contain him.

I scanned the area around me until my eyes fell on a woman walking cautiously towards me. There was no one else around except an animal that, at first, I thought was a horse but could soon see was actually a reindeer, harnessed to a small sled. The woman walked right up to the bars, examining me with a look more of concern than fear. She was young – in her early twenties, at most – but her hair was white, tied in a loose, messy braid that hung over her left shoulder, crowned by a thin, gold tiara. Her sparkling blue dress, long train, and high-heeled shoes looked more appropriate for a ballroom than this frozen mountain. I only took a second to process all of this before asking my standard question: "Did I hurt anybody?"

"No, no one," she answered, rather firmly, shaking her head for emphasis. "Are you hurt?"

I told her, "No," but was unable to resist wrapping my arms around my bare chest, now fully alert to just how cold it was.

The woman's eyes quickly darted down my body and back up to my face before they widened as if she'd just noticed how I was dressed... or not dressed. She turned and walked back to the sled, petting the reindeer before going around to the back and rummaging through some bundles. I noticed she wasn't shivering at all and wondered why she didn't seem the least bit cold in such a thin outfit.

"You must be freezing," she said when she came back. "Here." She tossed something at me through the bars that turned out to be a man's shirt, coat, and boots. "Good thing Kristoff's supplies were all still in the sled."

Fortunately, this Kristoff, whoever he might be, was evidently a big man, and the clothes were only a little snug; I'd made do with a lot worse before. Once I was dressed, I said, "Thank you," gratefully but warily, wondering if she was going to be my rescuer or my captor. Now that I was no longer in danger of freezing to death, I had to figure out what I'd landed in this time. "Where am I?" I asked her.

"Arendelle," she answered.

I'd never heard of it. "Is that near Norway?"

"Yes, that's just south of here, but we haven't had any interaction with them in centuries," she explained. She seemed understandably confused but not the least bit troubled or afraid. She spoke and carried herself with a grace and dignity impossible for me not to notice, even in such circumstances. Whatever her intentions, at least I'd been found by someone who wasn't panicking or crying. "We prefer a... different sort of lifestyle," she added.

I turned and looked at the castle and the ships in the harbor again. This must be the remote, northern, Scandinavian region I'd heard of, whose kingdoms hadn't embraced modern technology and operated as if it were medieval times. The rumors were they were full of magic and strange creatures like trolls.

I heard her walk up beside me. "Who are you?"

I was afraid she would ask that. I shook my head and looked away as I said, "I can't tell you."

"I see," she said simply, as if she had expected that. She walked around so that I was facing her again and answered the question I wanted to ask but, after the answer I'd just given her, felt I had no right to: "I'm Elsa – Queen Elsa of Arendelle."

My eyes automatically flitted up to the tiara on her head. I didn't doubt her claim for a second, but it made no sense – what was a queen doing out here all alone? "I'm sorry, I didn't know," I mumbled, wondering if I should bow or something. For no rational reason, I suddenly felt shy and awkward, not to mention worried about being found by the person in charge around here. How difficult would this make things for me?

"You're not from around here, are you?" the queen asked me, not haughtily, simply as if the fact was obvious based on my last statement.

"No... how long have I... been here?" I asked nervously.

"You don't know?"

"No."

She considered this for a second, but she must have believed me because she answered, "About a day, I think."

I had hoped she would tell me she had no idea, that she had only just now stumbled upon me while passing by. I braced myself and asked, "How... how much did you see?"

"Everything." I wondered if I should believe her – she seemed much too calm for a woman who had just met the other guy. "Is it... safe now?"

"Yeah, it's over, don't worry," I assured her. "I'm fine now." For the immediate future, at least, I hoped.

"If you promise you won't hurt me, I can let you out."

She didn't understand what she'd seen or how it worked. I wouldn't expect her to. "I'm not going to hurt you. Nothing will happen if you... let me out," I said, wondering what she meant by that.

"Okay. Don't be afraid."

_Shouldn't that be my line?_ I thought. While I was puzzling over her words, she raised her arms, twirled her hands, and the bars of the makeshift cage dissolved right before my eyes into tiny specks of ice that flew up into the air under her influence and then fell down into the snow.

Oh. Ice powers. That explained some things. "Impressive," I said, nodding my head.

She smiled slightly in obvious relief (that I hadn't hulked out as soon as I was free, I could only guess). "That's not the reaction I was expecting." As she lowered her arms, I noticed just how her dress and train caught the light from the setting sun and the snow and realized it must be made out of thin layers of ice!

I shook my head to clear the wide-eyed look from my face. "Thank you," I said, stepping over where the barrier had been a few seconds ago but not in her direction. I wanted to run from her – she had seen the other guy, and I felt as ashamed as if she'd seen me naked – but where would I go? I hated waking up in places I didn't know because I couldn't leave without getting directions, if nothing else, from someone. So I turned and looked at her, trying not to think of how frightened and appalled she must be after what she'd just witnessed. What next?

As if she'd read my mind, the queen walked back to her sled. I followed her, sensing she wanted me to. The reindeer cringed and made some frightened noises when I approached, but he relaxed after she stroked his neck and whispered that everything was okay. Then she turned back to me. "Where are you from?"

The reindeer, obviously trusting her judgment, let me pet him. "Far away," I said sadly, as I stroked his nose, wishing I could give her a proper answer or explanation for something.

I don't know what she saw, but her eyes suddenly widened, and she asked almost fearfully, "Are you all right?"

"Just a little dizzy," I told her truthfully, rubbing my brow. I walked towards a boulder a few feet away and sat down, clutching my forehead. The incident had drained me. Queen Elsa flicked her wrist around, conjuring up a seat of ice for herself near me. Once the dizziness passed, I looked back up and asked her, "How did I get here?"

"You don't remember?" Without waiting for an answer, she calmly explained: "The ice harvesters came running into town last night, frantic, saying they'd heard some raging beast crashing through the woods, heading our way. One of them said he'd seen some sort of horrible, green monster. I didn't know whether to believe them or not, but I decided I couldn't take a chance." Her earnest tone implied a monster of mysterious origins would not be the shock around here that it would be to the rest of the world I'd known. "I didn't want to risk any of my soldiers, so I told them to stay behind and guard the city in case anything came, while I went after it myself." I just now began to get a picture of how strong her powers must be for her to feel comfortable doing that. "They tried to protest, but I knew I could handle a strange, magical creature better than they could, and they knew it, too, and I refused to risk their lives before I at least knew what we were up against."

"You didn't bring any back up?" I couldn't help asking.

"I needed them all to stay behind to guard my sister to make sure she didn't try to follow me," the queen informed me, with a slight grin. "My brother-in-law's reindeer knows these mountains better than anyone, so I borrowed his sled and rode up here. We found a trail in a nearby grove of pine trees this afternoon. The damage went on for miles... I knew I had to find it and stop it before it hurt anyone, whatever it was. I followed its trail until a few hours ago, when I heard a large commotion coming from around the corner of a cliff. I left Sven with the sled, crept up to the side of the rock, and peered around. I..." She closed her eyes briefly and gripped both her arms before continuing. "I've never seen anything like it. It was shaped like a man but huge and green, tearing down everything in its path, roaring like a dragon. A pack of wolves were trying to attack it, and it was throwing them, tossing boulders, kicking up clouds of snow, until they realized it was too much for them, gave up, and ran off. It chased them, though, and one of them ran right past me..."

I had to look straight at her and remind myself she didn't have a scratch on her before I could calm down. Oh, no, how fast had that instant of panic sped up my pulse? _Relax. Breathe._

The queen went on: "I backed away as quickly as I could, but it saw me and charged right at me. I raised a wall of ice in front of it and ran towards the sled, but it tore through it like it was paper. I raised another, thicker one, and shouted, 'Who are you? How did you get here? What do you want?', hoping, if it _was_ human, it could understand me, but all it did was pound on the barrier. When I saw the ice crack, I yelled for Sven to stay back and raised myself up out of its reach on a column of ice. It broke through the wall, ran up, and started punching and pulling at the column. It shook me off, but I raised a wave of snow up to catch me, twisted it into another pillar, and froze it. From up there, I pulled up handful after handful of snow, froze them into icicles, and threw them at it over and over again like spears, hoping it would retreat, but it just... just..."

"Got angrier," I finished for her.

"Yes. It managed to dart forward and launch itself at the pillar under me, but I sent it tumbling backwards in a wave of snow. I jumped down, throwing a bigger wave of snow before me, trying to bury it, but I just couldn't hold it back. I raised a cocoon of ice up around its body, encasing it up to its neck, but it started breaking through that, too, and I realized I couldn't hold it for long, so I conjured up two of my creatures..."

"Out of snow? You can do that?"

"Yes."

I looked at the remnants of giant snow sculptures around us that I'd noticed before and realized these must be all that was left of what she was talking about. "How many?" I asked.

"Five. It destroyed the first two pretty quickly. I couldn't believe it – they were just as big and strong as the first creature I'd ever made to fight, and I remembered what it could do. I hurried and made another one twice as big, more ice than snow, and it took longer, but it eventually ripped that one apart, too. I did my best to hold that one together, keeping it fighting while I shouted, 'Why are you doing this? Please, I don't want to hurt you! I want to know what's going on!', but it was like it didn't hear a word I said."

"It didn't," I said involuntarily.

"It was so strong," she said, shuddering at some image in her mind. "I finally let it destroy that one while I conjured two more on either side of it. They grabbed its arms, and it tried to shake them off, but I anchored them into the ground and kept the snow and ice making up their arms intact. That gave me an idea for containing it. I shot a huge blast of ice in its face, freezing its head and shoulders. While it was ripping at the ice, trying to free itself, I began raising icicles around it. I needed to make them as thick and strong as possible, though, and I could only work on so many at once. When it ripped all the ice off its face and head, I had my creatures hold it between them – one in front holding its arms, one in back holding its shoulders – to buy me some time."

I looked over at the remaining pieces of his opponents again, picturing the fight too clearly for comfort in my mind, as she talked: "It finally broke one of them apart and threw it against the icicles I'd made so far, but I was too busy with those to reform it. By the time it threw and shattered the other one, it was fully trapped. It put up quite a fight against the cage I made. It would have broken through if I hadn't kept the ice under my influence, stopping it from giving way with my powers. No matter how strong it was, it couldn't break ice my powers held together. It took a lot of strain, but I knew I couldn't give up. I kept calling to it, hoping I could reach it somehow, but it never spoke, just kept snarling like a mad dog and trying harder and harder to knock the pillars over. I was beginning to wonder how long this could gone on and desperately thinking, What do I do now? I can't hold it here forever!, when it just... seemed to run out of energy..."

She narrowed her eyes, then closed them and put her fingers against her right temple, like she was trying to remember something. "I was so exhausted at that point, and I was concentrating so hard on keeping the cage intact, I couldn't even tell what was happening to it. I didn't let myself focus on it – I couldn't afford to get scared – I just focused on the ice. I can't describe how it happened, but... I don't know how..."

She didn't know how much I was aware of; she wanted to give me every detail. "I do," I finally said, turning back to her. "Forget about that. What happened when you saw me?"

The queen looked from me over to where his cage had been. "I still didn't relax, at first. I thought I must be seeing things, or it could be a magic trick or illusion, or it would come back any second. But nothing happened, and, eventually, I could feel myself calming down. I kept my arms raised and my powers acting on the ice, though, and waited, expecting anything after what I'd just seen. Still, nothing happened, so I dropped my guard and just stood there, breathing hard, telling myself, It's over, it's over, it's over.

"I snapped back to my senses when I heard Sven whinnying far behind me. I ran to him and hugged his neck, telling him I was all right. By now, I was tired but calm enough to wonder what was going on. I told Sven to stay behind and crept slowly up to the cage, doing my best not to make a sound. I saw a man lying unconscious on the ground where the monster had just been. It seemed crazy, impossible, but I'd seen him transform with my own eyes, and I knew it must have been him, but I had no idea how. I stepped gingerly up to one of the pillars to get a better look. I didn't recognize him. He didn't look injured, but he wasn't moving. For a second, I panicked that he might be dead, but, thanks to my power, I could see faint fogs of breath escaping from his nose. I sighed with relief when I realized he was definitely still alive.

"I whispered, 'Hello? Can you hear me?' When he didn't move or react at all, I said it a little louder, and louder again, but still, nothing. I raised my arm, planning to make a gap in the cage wide enough so I could walk up to him, but I stopped before I could start – I was too afraid to approach him. I backed away and then turned and started walking towards the sled, deciding I'd better get home and explain what had happened before they had too long to worry about me and send a rescue party or something, but I looked at him lying there and realized I couldn't leave him alone, especially without getting some answers. I finally couldn't think of anything else to do but wait and see if he woke up or if it came back."

"_Did_ anyone else come?" I asked, looking around me in every direction, wondering how many guards she had hiding, waiting to pounce on me and get themselves killed.

"No," the queen said softly, in a tone that told me she knew, once again, what I was thinking, and made me believe her. "I waited up here alone, keeping my eyes open for anything suspicious, until I heard you moaning and realized you were waking up. You know the rest."

I breathed another sigh of relief. No one had gotten hurt. No one was coming after me with pitchforks, handcuffs, or syringes. I could've fallen on my knees and wept with gratitude for how this incident had ended. But all I did was lean forward, hold my head in my hands, and say, "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For stopping him," I whispered, still overwhelmed with gratitude that she had come alone, that someone like her was the only one who found me this time. Who knew how anyone else might have reacted? What they would have done when they found me, unconscious and defenseless... this could very easily have had a very different ending...

My head shot up as the danger she'd put herself in hit me full-force. I turned to face her and said, "You shouldn't have done it. You should've run. He could have..." But my voice trailed off as I suddenly began to wonder: _Could_ he have killed her? If her story was as true as all the evidence around me suggested, she was incredibly powerful. Strong enough to overpower _him_. I dimly wondered in the back of my mind where her powers came from, but that wasn't important enough to dwell on for more than a second. Obviously, given her environment, they weren't scientific in origin – probably nothing I could understand. Maybe they were common around here, but, no, she'd said she'd come alone because she knew she was stronger than her army, so they obviously couldn't do what she did. Nobody could...

"What is it?" the queen asked.

I had no choice but to ask the question she must have seen in my face: "Why didn't you kill me?"

I guess I was wrong – she seemed stunned by the question. "I... don't know if I _could_ have killed it, if I tried. And I didn't want to hurt you."

"You would have done me a favor," I blurted out, not thinking about what I was saying, only that her powers seemed stronger than a bullet. I'd finally found someone strong enough to stop him, but I'd still missed my chance! It would never end! I'd never be free from him! I realized that I'd let my heart start racing. _No! Don't feel it!_ I took one deep breath and several slow ones.

I was just barely able to hear her ask me, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm fine," I whispered quickly and went back to focusing on my breathing.

"No, you're not, you're shaking," she said conclusively. "You _are_ hurt, aren't you?"

"No, I'm not, I'm just..." I started, but I gave up; I couldn't talk and take my pulse at the same time. I was getting way too frustrated. How stupid could I be? Right after an incident... "Get it together. Don't get angry. Don't feel it, don't feel it..."

I heard a terrified gasp. "What did you say?" The queen sounded so distressed when she said it that I opened my eyes and turned sharply towards her. I only then realized that I'd just been talking out loud.

I gulped and said, "I'm sorry, I... I..." I didn't seem to have any words adequate enough to apologize for being rude to a queen, let alone one as elegant and powerful as her. Talking to her made me too nervous – lost or not, I absolutely had to get out of here now. "Thank you for all your help. I'd better go."

"Go where?" she asked as I stood up. Her smile disturbed me – it was that smile that said she heard everything I was thinking but not saying. Why did I keep getting that impression from her? Before I could answer, she went on: "How far do you think you'll get in this weather? When was the last time you ate?"

All I could do was answer truthfully, "At least two days ago."

"Well, then, there's something else you'd better do before you go anywhere," she said in a serene tone that nonetheless didn't permit argument. I stayed where I was.

The queen stood up, walked over to the sled, and began unpacking some things from inside it. Even though I didn't know what she was planning, some male instinct made me ask, "Can I help?"

"Certainly – thank you," she said, so I joined her.

The supplies turned out to be firewood, frozen fish, a skillet, and filleting and cooking utensils. I was shocked when I realized she intended for us to eat together, but I couldn't protest – first of all, because she was the queen, and I owed her anyway for stopping the other guy; second of all, because I truly was hungry, and getting my strength back could only help me.

I began piling up the firewood and found a bundle of long, huge matches but didn't start it. I was confused to see that, in spite of her affinity with the cold and her icy outfit, she showed no reticence about getting close to an open flame. Was she even human, or some kind of ice-being that would melt like a snowman? I didn't say anything, however, but merely looked at her quizzically. Sure enough, she heard me anyway, smiled, and assured me, "Don't worry – the cold doesn't bother me, but heat doesn't hurt me." She held out her arms to indicate her outfit. "I can keep it frozen no matter how warm it gets."

"Very impressive," I said as I struck a match and lit the wood, enjoying the heat as much as the prospect of food. As we began preparing the fish for cooking, I thought aloud, "I wish the cold didn't bother _me_." I didn't understand why the queen looked so solemn when I said that. Some part of me said it was a presumption, but I asked anyway: "How do you do that?"

"I was born with it," she answered laconically. "How do you do that?"

I trusted and respected her enough by now to answer, "I was... experimenting with things I shouldn't have. I played with fire – I got burned."

"And now you're cursed."

"You could say that."

"I'm sorry."

I stayed quiet for a bit as I let her pity sink in. Pity for my condition was almost as hard to bear as fear, disgust, and hatred. "I'm sorry you had to see it."

"Don't worry about me – I'm used to it."

I jerked my head up and looked directly at her when she said that. What was she getting at? As we began cooking the fish, I ventured to ask, "What do you mean?"

She looked at her hands and sighed, "I'm under a curse, too. It's under control now, but for years, it was a constant, living nightmare."

That was unexpected. She seemed to have mastered her powers so well. Then again, I'd heard of such things before. "Oh, I had no idea..."

"It doesn't matter, it's in the past now," she said with successfully but just-barely detectably forced nonchalance.

"Does anyone else around here have it?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then why you?"

"I wish I knew. No one could tell me or my parents why I was born with it."

I'd originally expected her to refuse to answer me. I couldn't understand why she answered so freely, as if she was eager to talk to me about it. "How long did it take you to get the hang of it?"

"At first, I didn't have any trouble with it. My parents didn't like it, so I eventually only used it when they weren't around. My sister loved it, and I used it when we played together all the time. But then, one night, there was an accident, and I..." Her eyes were so sad and her voice so heavy at that point that I decided I didn't want to know and was glad that she trailed off and picked it up with, "My parents were horrified. I never realized how dangerous my powers could be. I used to enjoy them, but, from that day on, I hated them. All I wanted was to control them..."

"I thought you _could_ control them before that."

"Yes, but I... _we_ wanted to _control_ them. To... to stop them..."

I understood where this was going. "You mean to hide them? To repress them?"

The queen sighed deeply. "Yes. But the harder I tried, the worse it got. It was like I could never turn them off." I began feeling stranger and stranger as she talked. "I was afraid to go anywhere or see anyone or touch anything. But no matter what I did, it grew stronger. I spent almost all my time in my room where no one could see, terrified that someday, someone would find out, and I'd be doomed. I felt trapped, a prisoner in my own body." I kept turning to her and then forcing myself to look anywhere but at her. "Any time I got frightened or anxious or lonely or excited or... I never knew what might set them off. My emotions were my enemy." I kept my eyes focused on the snowy ground as I listened, trying to keep my own flashbacks from crowding in on me. "Hour after hour, day after day, I sat alone practicing, trying to keep calm, drilling myself: Conceal it. Don't feel it. Don't let it show. Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know..."

_No, it's impossible..._ Looking off into the distance, I repeated, "Conceal it. Don't feel it." Then I turned and looked her right in the eye and said, "Don't get upset. Don't get angry. Don't let it in..."

"Don't let them in. Don't let them see," Queen Elsa finished.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I didn't realize just how much trouble she'd had controlling her powers, what she'd suffered because of them, until now. The clearer picture Elsa just gave me made look away towards the horizon again before I asked, "How did they find out?"

"I lost control at my coronation. I ran into the mountains, but they came after me. They tried to kill me."

Even though I could see that she obviously survived, this terrified me. "How did you escape?"

"I didn't. They captured me and chained me up in the dungeon," Elsa said with no more emotion than if we were discussing the weather.

I couldn't help gasping, "They did _what_?! How could they be so stupid?!"

"I know, but they didn't understand. Metal is one of the materials most vulnerable to my powers – it's always the first to freeze when I'm near it or touch it. I panicked thinking of how many people I would hurt and how much damage I would do if they didn't let me go."

_No..._ The more I heard, the more familiar it sounded. I sighed and whispered, "They never get it."

"No, they don't, do they?"

She'd let me in. Now I had to let her in. "After it happened, they wanted to capture me. Do experiments on me. I escaped and ran away. I've been hiding ever since. I just wanted everyone to be safe from me. The only way I can protect them is to stay away from everybody."

"That was why I left – so I wouldn't hurt anyone, especially my sister. She hated me for shutting her out, but I had to stay away to protect her."

A beautiful face crept into my own mind, but I pushed it away by asking, "How did she react when she found out?"

"She just seemed stunned. She said she wasn't afraid of me, but everyone else... they thought I was a wicked witch, a dark sorceress, a..."

I felt like I had to say it: "A monster."

"Yes." It wasn't pity I'd sensed from her earlier – it was sympathy! "After I lost control, I knew I had to run, but..."

"But there's nowhere to run," I said without meaning to. "Nowhere to hide. No way out. Because it's inside you, and there's no escape from it." I hung my head, more exhausted by those few words than I'd ever been by any battle.

Suddenly, it all made sense. Why she could read my mind, why she reacted so strangely when I'd recited the same mantra, why she hadn't been afraid, why she was being so kind to me. She knew exactly what I was going through. Because she'd been through the exact same thing.

Elsa served us both our primitive supper as if nothing unusual had happened, as if nothing we'd just said was monumental enough to interrupt our meal. "Not by running," she said right before she took her first bite.

"You think you've finally found a way to keep it in, but it always breaks free," I agreed, following her lead and beginning to eat.

"How? What triggers yours?"

To my surprise, it was easy to say, "Anger. I can never get angry, never let my heart speed up, or... you saw what happens." It was safe to let her in.

"That's what happened in Norway? How you ended up here?"

"Yes."

Elsa was silent for a bit before she asked, "How often does it happen?"

"I can go more than a year without an incident. As long as I can control my anger."

Her eyes grew wide at this. "You can go a year without getting angry?"

"I have to."

"How?"

"Avoid people as much as I can. When I can't, ignore everything as much as I can – don't see or hear anything I might not like. Never speak up or fight back, no matter what they do to me. Just..."

"... Don't feel it," Elsa finished with me.

I was actually smiling when I said, "You would think, after years of practice, it would get easier."

"But it only got harder."

As I looked at the young woman sitting beside me, my heart broke at the thought of her going through what I did every day. "But you can control it now?" I asked, desperately hoping, for her sake, that she would confirm what everything I saw seemed to suggest.

"Yes," she answered, smiling softly. "I have no problems with it now."

We ate in silence for a minute before I finally asked, "How?" Of course, our powers had such different origins that it couldn't possibly apply to my own situation at all, but I was curious nonetheless.

"It's a long story," Elsa replied. "You see, the day of my coronation, they erupted like an icy volcano, turning summer into winter, freezing the entire kingdom just like I used to freeze my bedroom when I was little."

"What happened?" I don't know why I asked – I knew the answer.

"Oh, my sister just..." She shook her head before she could finish. "... We disagreed about something. It was silly, really, and I tried to end the discussion, but she wouldn't take No for an answer. I warned her not to..."

I finished for her this time: "Not to make you angry." I pictured her urgently begging her sister not to make her angry, not to upset her, knowing what would happen if she pressed the issue, the unsuspecting girl continuing to push her until...

"Yes, but she wouldn't listen when I told her I'd heard enough. Before I knew it, icicles were bursting out of the ground, snow was shooting out of my fingertips, and everything I touched was freezing."

I could see her running in my mind, leaving a trail of destruction in her wake that she was powerless to stop. All you could do was watch helplessly as the storm inside you raged on. And unlike me, she would have been fully aware of the devastation she was causing! While I was thinking once again how horrible it was that someone like her should have to suffer like that, I noticed the expression on her face. "It wasn't your fault," I told her firmly.

"That's what my sister says, too," Elsa said in a tone that showed she clearly disagreed. "But if I'd just been able to control them..."

To reassure her, I said, confidently, "But if it hadn't happened, you would never have learned _how_ to control them," easily deducing where this was going.

"True. After I ran away, I realized I had no reason to hold back any longer, so I just... stopped fighting it. I unleashed all my powers, all my emotions, everything I'd spent years trying and failing to suppress. And it felt so _good_!" She raised her voice so sharply and suddenly at that point that I almost jumped out of my skin. "For the first time in years, I was free. I always thought that I hated my powers – at least, I trained myself to. I told myself to. But it wasn't until then that I finally admitted the truth: I loved them! The things I was doing, the things I was making... it wasn't horrible, it was beautiful! It felt _right_. My power... I realized it was a part of myself, and I knew I could never try to conceal it again; it would be like committing suicide. I vowed then and there that I would never do that to myself again."

"How long did that last?" I asked her.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, before you learned how to control them?"

"That's how I did it. I didn't realize it at the time, but that was when I found the answer to all my problems."

I was as confused by that answer as she was by the question. "I don't understand. I thought you finally figured out how to successfully restrain your emotions."

Elsa shook her head. "No – I said I learned how to control my powers."

"But that's the same thing."

"No, it isn't," Elsa replied. "That's what I always thought, but I finally realized I'd been going about it the wrong way. I thought if I could just control my emotions, I could control my powers. So I tried to stop myself from feeling anything. I thought I could bury my powers down deep inside, along with my feelings, where they could never escape. But it didn't work. The more I practiced, the harder I tried, the harder it became to do."

"What changed that?" I asked, now completely clueless where this was going.

"I gave up," she stated plainly. "I let myself feel. I stopped trying to keep it in and hold it back and just... let it go. Once I stopped fearing my emotions, they no longer had any power over me. Once I started using my powers instead of concealing them all the time, I was able to tame them."

For a moment, I was too confused to speak. I re-translated and re-re-translated her words a million times in my head to make sure I understood her. It made no sense. "And... that worked?" I asked, dumbfounded. "You just 'let it go,' and you were able to control it?"

"Well, it took me some time to make the connection and get used to the idea, but, yes," Elsa said with a nod. "All I had to do was stop fearing it as a curse and start accepting it as a gift."

"Good for you," I said spontaneously with an uncharacteristically bright smile. Part of me still found such a radical approach hard to believe, but another part of me was so happy for her.

Elsa's response, however, was, "You don't believe me," with an amused half-smile.

"After what you showed me today, I believe you're telling the truth," I explained; she handled her powers with too much effortless discipline and precision for me to doubt she could control them now. "It's just... something I never would have thought of."

"I guess I can understand that," she said, with a shrug. "If someone told me that when I was young, still struggling not to frost up my bedroom windows, I never would have believed them."

"I'm glad it works for you," I said. She was right – for people like her, power _was_ a gift. It was different in my case. Unleashing my emotions didn't set me free; it enslaved me. My "power" could never be used to create anything beautiful, only to destroy. I could never accept the other guy as a part of me. I was glad she wasn't cursed like I was; someone so young and kind and beautiful, with such promise, deserved better...

"Maybe it could work for you, too."

I'd been raising a forkful of fish to my mouth, but froze mid-gesture. I turned my head slowly towards her, my eyebrow raised in confusion, but her expression was completely serious. In fact, she looked so hopeful about the idea that it actually hurt me to shake my head and straighten her out: "I wish it could, but it doesn't work that way: I feel angry, my pulse speeds up, I transform. If I allowed myself to feel all the time, I'd just be a raging, mindless beast all the time."

"How well is forbidding yourself to feel angry working out?"

Was I laughing? I was, just a little. I shrugged and said, "I'll get better at it."

"Can you?" But before I could answer, she asked, "Do you want to?"

I sighed and paused for a minute before saying, "I wish I didn't have to, but I _have_ to."

"Don't you feel like the more you keep it in, the stronger it gets?"

If I could, I wouldn't have answered this, but when I looked up, I saw her looking back at me with sorrowful but narrowed eyes that forbade me from evading the question. I closed my eyes and whispered, "Yes." She had no idea just how strong he was, how thoroughly he had me trapped...

I wasn't surprised to hear Elsa ask, "What are you thinking of?"

She didn't demand an answer this time, but not answering would have been like lying to her. Keeping my head down, I said flatly, "He got too strong for me once. I didn't think I could go on living like this anymore, so I tried to end it. I tried to kill myself." There was no gasp, no outcry, no horrified "What?", no sign of surprise or pain at all; it was a confession she'd expected and been prepared for. I tried not to wonder if this was because she'd ever experienced the same temptation. "He wouldn't let me. He wouldn't let me go."

We were both quiet for a moment, then Elsa said gently, "It doesn't sound like the conceal-don't-feel strategy is working out too well."

What could I say to that? "Maybe not, but it's the only option I have."

"What if it isn't?"

I looked up but away from her and shook my head again. "I can't risk finding out by letting myself get angry."

"But it's not actually getting angry that does it. It's your heart speeding up, right?" Elsa asked patiently.

I nodded as I turned back to her. "Yeah, but..."

"What if getting angry didn't do that to you?"

I tried not to sound too depressed when I said, "It's not possible – that's what anger does."

"And the more you try not to feel it, the more easily it does it." She didn't say it as a question.

"For now," I confessed. "If I could just learn to control my anger..." That sounded so pathetically redundant that I let my voice trail off.

"Maybe you're trying to control the wrong thing. Maybe if you let it out, it wouldn't affect your heart so much, and then you'd be able to control your power."

It did make some sense – if anger didn't affect my pulse, if my heart no longer reacted to my emotions, I'd be perfectly safe. If I could change how fast or slow my heart beat at will, regardless of what I felt, the other guy couldn't sneak up on me... That thought, however, made me say, "He wouldn't like that. He'll never let me go."

"You can't run from him forever," Elsa said as gently as ever.

The same thought occurred to me every day, but I still shuddered when she said it. "I know, but I have to try. If I stop, there's no telling how many people would get hurt. There's nothing else I can do."

"You could stop and face him."

"I don't want to face him," I said softly but abruptly. "I don't want to accept him. He's not a part of me."

"He is now. As long as you fear him, you'll never be able to control it." She was the first person I'd ever met whose experiences meant she could say this without being patronizing.

"I don't fear him. I hate him."

"It's the same thing." I knew she was right, but I also knew she wasn't judging me, just summing up the situation. "The more you fear him, the more you hate him, and the more you hate him..."

"... The angrier I get," I admitted. "But I can't let him catch me – he's stronger than I am."

"Only if you allow him to be."

"But if I just stopped giving him power over me, if I stopped being afraid to feel, if I let myself get angry instead of concealing it, it wouldn't affect me so strongly, and I'd be able to control it, right?"

"I think so. That's how it worked for me."

"I know," I said weakly, wishing I could agree with her. I felt like I was letting her down when I said, "But this is different."

As we looked at each other, I realized I was reading her mind this time. I could tell she was remembering when she'd been in my position in this same conversation, telling someone who wanted to help her that it was pointless, that what they were hoping just wasn't possible, that they didn't understand what they were dealing with and had to let her handle it the best way she knew how. That was why she didn't argue with me, but said sincerely, "I'm sorry. I just wanted to help."

"You have," I assured her. "You didn't try to arrest me or lock me up. I wish I had some way to repay you, but..."

"You really think I want to hear that?"

"No." Before I could stop myself, I added, "I'm glad you're the one who found me."

"So am I," said Elsa. "I never thought I'd meet someone I could talk to about this. You're the first person I've ever met who... who understands."

"There are a lot of people like you where I come from," I informed her.

"Really?"

"Yes." Seeing her next question forming in her mind, I added, "But not like me – at least, none that I've found."

"You've found one now."

Before I could comment on that, she stood up and began repacking the supplies, and I wordlessly moved to help her. When I went to stamp out the remains of the fire, she shook her head and waved her hand over it, burying the wood under a thin blanket of snow. As we loaded the bundles back on the sled, Elsa asked me, "Where will you go now?"

Good question – the sun was setting, and it was getting colder; winter was the worst time of year for an incident. "Not back to Norway," was the only thing I knew for sure. "Maybe Finland, Sweden... some country where he hasn't been seen yet, where they won't be looking for me."

"Would they ever think to look for you here?"

I thought for a minute (not about the answer to her question, but about the implication behind it) before answering, "Probably not, but I have to get back to..." I wasn't sure what was the right word to use. "... to my world. I need the resources they have there to continue my studies. It's the only hope I have of finding a cure."

"I see," said Elsa, reminding me of a company executive conducting business at a board meeting. "There's a trade ship bound for Corona tomorrow. It's south of here, and you'd be able to find passage to your part of the world from there."

"Thank you. What's the quickest way down from here to the port?"

"This way," Elsa said as she mounted the sled, took the reins, and nodded at me to sit beside her. She must have seen the wild idea of refusing crossing my mind because she added, "Queen's orders." I could swear even the reindeer smirked at me.

"Yes, Your Majesty," I said as I took my seat, and we both smiled. She snapped the reins once, and we rode down the slope towards this Arendelle.

When I could see the lights of a city approaching, I asked her, with a lump forming in my throat, "What are you going to tell them?"

"The truth," was her only answer.

It was pandemonium when we pulled into the courtyard of a small but beautiful castle. We were instantly surrounded by soldiers, servants, and calls of, "Thank goodness you're all right, Your Highness!", "Where have you been?", "We were planning on sending a rescue party!", "Princess Anna's been worried sick," "What happened?", etc., etc.

"Elsa!" A young girl with strawberry-blonde hair ran through the crowd and threw her arms around Elsa. "You're all right!"

"I'm fine, Anna," I managed to hear Elsa reply over the din. "Everything's fine."

A young blonde man who'd run outside after the girl now came up. "What happened up there?" he asked.

"Did you find the monster, my Queen?" asked a soldier who, judging from his uniform, was of a higher rank than the others, probably the captain.

"Yes," Elsa told him authoritatively. "I don't wish to discuss it. Let everyone know that Arendelle is safe, and they have nothing to fear – it's been taken care of."

I expected the captain to press for more information, but he simply bowed and said, "Yes, my Queen." I guessed everyone here knew by experience that when the queen wished to keep something private, it stayed that way.

Well, almost everyone. The redhaired girl I'd learned was named Anna squealed, "What do you mean? Elsa, what happened?"

"Not now, Anna, not here," Elsa whispered, and the other girl nodded in understanding.

Elsa climbed down from the sled and gestured for me to follow her. The blonde man, who'd turned his attention to the reindeer by then, asked, "Who's this?"

"A stranger," Elsa answered him. "He found the creature before I did. He's lucky to be alive. He'll be our guest for tonight."

I don't remember many details about that night. I was terrified of being questioned, of my secret somehow getting out, of someone learning I was the monster they had seen. I spent every minute I was in the castle waiting for the ax to fall, but it never did. I remember being shown to a nice room and given better clothes. None of the servants I met seemed to find anything out of the ordinary in my presence there; I gleaned that Elsa and her sister the princess kept in such close contact with their people that the castle gates were always open and most guest rooms occupied, that it wasn't the least bit unusual for one of their subjects to come to them for help like a need for shelter without fear of being turned away. It was certainly a comfortable place to spend a winter night, but I was too nervous (and nervous about feeling nervous) to enjoy it much.

I didn't see Elsa again until the next morning when she escorted me to the harbor. She'd been cool and reserved toward me ever since we'd arrived, which I'd expected – neither I nor she needed her people seeing their queen acting too familiar with some poor, nameless foreigner. The only down side was this meant that I couldn't protest when she paid my passage on a ship or when she gave me money for the next leg of the journey after I got to this Corona. With so many people around in the harbor, going about their business, I couldn't tell her how much everything she'd done meant to me, either. All I could do was bow and say, "Thank you for your help and hospitality, my Queen."

"You're welcome," she said out loud, but then she whispered, "And thank _you_, sir."

It was after she turned and started walking away that I thought of the one thing I could give her to repay my debt, the one way I could show her how grateful I was that I'd met her. I called after her, "Dr. Banner." She stopped and turned around. "My name is Dr. Bruce Banner."

Elsa smiled and said formally, "If you ever need any help, Dr. Banner..."

I inclined my head towards her again. "Thank you, my Queen."

"Elsa," she whispered.

I don't know how, but I managed to whisper back, "Elsa," before we turned and walked our separate ways – her to her castle and me to the gangplank of the ship.

That was the last I saw of Queen Elsa of Arendelle. I thought of her often in the months that followed, chiefly whenever I started to feel lonely. I remembered what we talked about and thought of millions of other questions I would have liked to have asked her and things I'd been through that I would have liked to tell her about. I never worried that she would tell anyone the truth about the mysterious monster and her mysterious guest, even her sister – I was surprised that I trusted so easily that she would keep my secret. I did occasionally worry about _her_, though – what if her people or some neighboring kingdom, convinced she was a wicked witch, turned on the snow-queen again? I hoped that everything was still going well for her. No news of the kingdom reached the outside world, so all I could do was guess. What was going on there now? I wondered if anything had changed in her kingdom, or for her family, if she'd ever gotten married or anything.

But, more than anything, I thought of her advice – feel, don't conceal. Thinking about it never made it seem any less infeasible, however. As soon as I left Arendelle, I rededicated myself to my training in anger management and breath control and doubled my guard against getting angry, but the results were no better than before. The next incident struck only six months later, and I found myself on the run again. No matter how hard I tried to contain my anger, it never seemed to be hard enough. Everything I tried only worked for a while – no herbs, no techniques, no amount of isolation kept it away forever. The more I tried to fight it, the more trapped I felt, and, of course, the more trapped I felt, the more tense and angry I grew, and the harder it was to fight it – I was caught in a vicious cycle and could see no way out.

I tried to find comfort in the fact that I now knew someone who had survived the same thing, but it didn't help because I knew her strategy would never work for me. _Just let it go_, she had said. But how could I when I'd seen what happened when I let my anger out? But as I thought about the distinction she'd made between anger and the body's physical reaction – the real trigger – I eventually started to think of my problem in different terms. I kept holding it back, but it kept building up, and, of course, the more pressure builds up, the stronger the force when it bursts free; the only way to stop it from bursting is to relieve the pressure.

But relieving the pressure meant releasing my anger, and that wouldn't just freeze everything over like she did but send me on a rampage of destruction. How could I prevent that? How could I get my body so accustomed to anger that anger no longer affected it?

Finally, the day came where my pulse sped up to 160 beats per minute, and, now desperate enough to try anything, I just started walking. I walked until I was deep in the mountains, and then I started running as fast as I dared. Once I was sure I was miles away from any human soul, I stripped down to my pants, threw my clothes in a pile, took one last look around me, and then I did what Elsa did after she ran away: I let it go. I let my veins flood with anger and the power course through my body. When I came to, several trees were uprooted, and a few dead birds were scattered all over the ground, but the watch I'd removed showed me this was the shortest incident I'd ever had.

I remained in the wilderness for a few days, repeating the exercise. I let the waves of fear, anger, frustration, and loneliness pour over me and watched myself transform. I summoned up my most painful memories and faced them for the first time before letting them drive me into the Hulk. Eventually, I was able to think of them without transforming. Whenever I started to get upset, I gave into it. I let the storm of fury and sorrow rage on within me until it ran its course.

Finally, I could feel a difference. I was getting used to it. I'd released enough anger to relieve the pressure in my body. Emotional reactions no longer sent my pulse rate skyrocketing so easily. I returned to civilization and got back on the road, but I didn't stop allowing myself to feel angry; that was the only way to keep up my immunity to its effects. I could be angry, but it made no difference to my pulse – the feeling became too familiar to evoke a response. Elsa was right – the trick wasn't to never get angry but to always feel angry so that it lost its power over me.

The first night after I'd settled into my cramped but safe quarters in a secluded village in India and realized I was no longer as afraid as I'd always been of hurting the people around me, I looked to the northern horizon and whispered to the woman who taught me, who saved me, "Thank you."

I never told anyone where I'd learned how to control my power, only how I did it:

"_I'm always angry."_


End file.
